[TriEmbed] Anyone have their own Christmas light show?

[Scott Hall]

Rodney (and any interested),

As a semi-expert in this (I have been designing my display for over 10 years),
you want to consider these points:

  * the going standard for the controls and channel signals is DMX, originally a
    theater and stage light controlling system
  * you DO NOT want to use relays, as they will quickly fail, and cannot act
    fast enough
  * typically MOSFETs are used as they can be switched much faster, and are
    suitable for PWM average power control; for experimental purposes
    Darlingtons can also be used
  * normal DMX uses 3-wire or 4-wire microphone-like cables
  * I have several articles on specifically using ESP8266s as DMX endpoints
    decoding the DMX protocol, and firing 4 channels of PWM outputs (through a
    mux) for multistring or RGB control
  * neopixels take a serial data stream, which is something else that the ESP's
    are good at
    (I did this this year, neopixels in luminaries, where they all emulated
    candle-light flicker & colors until the show, then each became individual
    RGB lights to the soundtrack, and then went back to luminaries after the show)
  * there are quite a number of open source DMX software out there
  * MIDI is exactly a good source material, and the DMX controller software can
    start with those files or signals; check out this YouTube video of the Piano
    Guys who rigged a MIDI pickup to a piano to control a DMX-based system:
    "88 Piano Keys Control 500,000 Christmas Lights! I Saw Three Ships - The
    Piano Guys"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2IBGlDJ3lg

I have a couple of co-workers who do this, and can forward their contact info
off-list if you ask me.

On 01/02/2018 11:03 AM, Brian Henning via TriEmbed wrote:
> I'd encourage you to consider solid-state control instead of some of the relays, as it would give you the option of dimming.  I find instantaneous on/off displays, especially when really bright, hard on the eyes.  Of course, I'm a lighting designer by night, so I'm particularly opinionated about such displays. :-D
>
> John's suggestion of using MIDI is not a bad one.  I'd encourage you to consider it, at least as a format for your sequencing data.
>
> Aside: A family near where my parents live has had a large music-synched display for the past few years; I think they're trying to get noticed by local media.  It's huge, bright, and dazzling, but (imnsho) not artistic at all.  Don't be that guy. X-D
>
> -B
>
>
> On 12/28/2018 12:33 PM, Rodney Radford via TriLUG wrote:
>> For years I have been reading about, researching, and wishing for a fancy Christmas light show on my house and I have decided next year I will put together my first setup.
>>
>> My plan is to build several 8 and 16 channel light control boxes that have power in to the outlets, and be controlled from an esp8266 (arduino + wifi) controller fed to a 8x or 16x channel relay board. This would mean I only need to run one power line to each board and all control sequences can be controlled from one system inside the house.
>>
>> I plan to put one on each side of the house for the bushes/trees and porch railing, and one on a large cone christmas tree (16x strands of 100 lights each).
>>
>> I already have 165' of neopixels that I bought for this project about 2 years ago and I want to put them along the roof line.
>>
>> I am researching different open source control software and have several that look promising, but have not downloaded and tried out yet.
>>
>> I am reaching out to see if anyone else on the TriLUG and TriEmbed lists already have their own lights and if so, would you be willing to trade a few emails on ideas, suggestions, things to stay away from, etc?
>>
>> Btw, this is the first video of a long series showing how to build the control boxes and using Vixen software to control the lights. I like the general idea, but I plan to use the esp8266 for the control link instead of a Raspberry Pi and wired ethernet.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvG9c84ApFA
>>
>> I have 11 months until Thanksgiving... that is my deadline.
>>
>> ;-)
>

-- 
Scott G. Hall
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall1 at GMail.Com

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